The 1970s Computer Graphics Video That Inspired Tron
Posted by Videodrome on Tuesday, Dec 21, 2010
MAGI was founded in 1966 to help the government model nuclear radiation transport, or the way that radiation would travel in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. By the 1970s, it had become one of the country’s only computer graphics companies, thanks largely to a software package it developed called Synthavision. Using the techniques of ray-tracing and constructive solid geometry, Synthavision’s modeling eschewed polygons or wireframe meshes for solids.
When Stephen Lisberger saw a reel of the company’s work in Boston in 1976, above, he had an epiphany). “I realized that there were these techniques that would be very suitable for bringing video games and computer visuals to the screen. And that was the moment that the whole concept flashed across my mind.”
Disney would later pay MAGI $1.2 million to work on the film’s pioneering action sequences.
On the strength of MAGI’s work on Tron, in 1983, Disney commissioned the firm to create a test film featuring characters from the book “Where the Wild Things Are”. The test used CGI animation for the background and traditional 2-D animation for the character of Max and his dog. Directed by John Lasseter, who would later found Pixar, it looks like a far cry from Spike Jonze’s 2008 version of “Wild Things.” But it utilized techniques that would impact that film and every other computer-graphics-dependent movie.
See our behind-the-scenes "documentary on the Spike Jonze version of Where the Wild Things Are.
Filed under:
